Xiaomi 15 Ultra review: I can’t see how phone cameras get better than this

Introduction

There’s more than one way to make an incredible camera phone. Some brands prefer pixel count. Others are all-in on algorithms. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra? It takes the brute force approach. This no-holds-barred flagship has what’s arguably the most capable set of snappers ever squeezed into a single handset.

No other 2025 front runner has a one inch lead sensor, and this one is paired with two high pixel count zoom lenses. It also builds on the outgoing Xiaomi 14 Ultra with more advanced colour science from imaging expert Leica. But that’s not to say this mobile has a one track mind: there’s also a top tier CPU, big battery, and simply gorgeous screen.

It commands a premium price as a result, rubbing shoulders with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max. But having spent the last few weeks with one, I’m convinced: if you’re all about phone photography, this should be top of your list.

Design & build: round we go again

Subtle rear logo aside, you’ll have a hard time telling the Xiaomi 15 Ultra from its Chinese flagship contemporaries: Oppo, Honor, Vivo and OnePlus all now rock a giant circular camera island in some form or another. Xiaomi was admittedly one of the first to do it, though – Nokia’s ahead-of-its-time Lumia 1020 notwithstanding – and I can’t deny how imposing the black glass disc looks on my White review unit.

The two-tone Silver Chrome model makes even more of a design statement. It mixes glass with faux leather to evoke a classic Leica camera. There’s even a tiny Ultra logo where you’d expect to see Leica’s iconic red dot. Every version has a flat central frame made from aluminium, giving you plenty to hold onto. The matte finish and textured rear glass on my unit had no trouble fending off fingerprints.

This is easily the thickest and heaviest entry in 2025’s flagship class so far, being 9.3mm thick before taking the camera bulge into account and weighing a considerable 226g. That’s still an improvement on last year’s phone, and it feels more satisfying to wield than some of its skinnier rivals. The way the front and rear glass gently slopes into the frame helps on that front. You won’t find any sort of physical camera controls here, a la Apple, Sony or Oppo – but that’s because Xiaomi has the wonderful optional Photography kit instead. More on that below.

Up front, the ultrasonic under-display fingerprint sensor is ridiculously quick, and even works with wet hands. Face unlocking can’t match Apple or Google for security, though, so is only useful for skipping the lock screen.

IP68 protection isn’t as good as it gets for phones anymore, with some top-tier phones getting IP69 ratings for extra peace of mind. It wasn’t like not being able to put the Xiaomi 15 Ultra through my dishwasher was any sort of dealbreaker, though.

Screen & sound: sublime shiner

I like that Xiaomi continues to walk its own path with the 15 Ultra, sticking to 2.5D glass instead of following the crowd with a fully flat screen. The curvature is super subtle, so there aren’t any distracting light reflections, and swiping to the screen edge feels that little bit nicer under your fingertip, yet the bezels have stayed satisfyingly slim.

The underlying OLED panel is basically faultless. It’s expansive at 6.73in, but not as much of a palm-stretcher as the iPhone 16 Pro Max or Galaxy S25 Ultra. It packs in more pixels than the larger Samsung, too – although both phones default to a lower resolution to save battery. Everything looks tack sharp regardless, with fantastic viewing angles and rich, dynamic colours. Dig into the settings menus and there are a plethora of options to tweak things to your personal tastes.

Fast scrolling is as smooth as silk thanks to LTPO variable refresh tech, which can dip as low as 1Hz for maximum power savings when showing static content, like the always-on display mode. HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support then covers the majority of streaming content, as well as Google’s Ultra HDR format for brightening up your photo gallery.

Xiaomi’s bespoke Shield Glass 2.0 can’t diffuse light reflections like the S25 Ultra’s Gorilla Armor can, and the firm hasn’t cranked up the maximum brightness to extreme levels either – but a peak 3200 nits and very effective HBM mode meant I had no trouble using the phone outdoors on the brightest of days. Only the Pixel 9 XL shines brighter, and it makes next to no difference in daily use.

I don’t rate the down-firing speaker and earpiece tweeter quite as highly, but they by no means let the side down. There’s ample volume here, and more low-end presence than you’ll find from most flagships. It won’t out-shout even a basic Bluetooth speaker, but won’t send you scurrying for a pair of headphones either.

Camera hardware: sensor superiority

Each of the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s four rear shooters mean business, but it’s the one inch main sensor that’ll turn the most heads. The Sony-supplied LYT-900 is as physically large as phone cameras get, to maximise light intake and deliver dreamy amounts of natural bokeh blur. It has optical image stabilisation, and ditches the variable aperture seen on last year’s Xiaomi 14 Ultra for a fixed f/1.63 lens.

The two telephoto cameras follow closely behind. The first has a 50MP Sony IMX858 sensor with f/1.8 aperture, OIS, 3x optical zoom and 10cm focus distance for macro-level close-ups; the second is a Samsung-sourced HP9 sensor with a massive 200MP pixel count, f/2.6 aperture, OIS and 4.3x zoom.

A 50MP, f/2.2 ultrawide brings up the rear. With a bit of sensor cropping, Xiaomi reckons you’re getting a near-lossless zoom range of 14-400mm – and digital zoom maxes out at a massive 120x. Each sensor sits behind Leica-approved glass, and let you pick between the firm’s Authentic and Vibrant colour profiles.

All four rear cameras are capable of 4K/60p Dolby Vision HDR or 10-bit LOG video recording, while the main and telephoto lenses can also pull of 120fps 4K slow motion.

Xiaomi’s updated camera app puts a multitude of modes and functions a swipe or two away, including Leica film-simulating filters and the Fastshot mode, which is a bit like shooting with an analogue rangefinder camera. Want to replicate that feeling further? Then pick up the optical Photography kit.

Essentially an updated version of the kit sold for the outgoing Xiaomi 14 Ultra, this clip-on battery grip adds 2000mAh of bonus power, a physical shutter button, and customisable controls for zooming or changing functions without having to tap the touchscreen. I love that the shutter button is threaded now, for adding a Leica-style soft release switch (two are included in the box) and that Xiaomi also bundles in a machined metal thumb grip.

The USB-C connection ensures zero latency, and a long-press of the shutter takes you straight into the camera app. You can pick whether to charge the phone right away, or save the extra juice for when you really need it, and pick exactly what the control dial adjusts. I’m even coming around to the two-tone black and red colour scheme.

As before, it comes with a protective case you’ve got to pop your phone into for the grip to sit flush. It has detachable rings for fitting a threaded 67mm filter, and the faux leather texture provides plenty of grip. I genuinely think it’s an essential purchase.

Camera image quality: the Leica look

Fixed aperture aside, the lead lens hasn’t changed all that much between generations. It can still be relied upon to deliver simply gorgeous shots in pretty much any situation, from bright sunshine to the darkest of night. Software tweaks have mostly made up for the lack of variable aperture, preserving the natural depth blur you just don’t get from smaller sensors, but still able to preserve the levels of fine detail that put it among the very best camera phones. It can’t shake the shallow depth of field completely, of course – so if you’re not a fan of that particular look I can understand why you’d prefer competing handsets.

Dynamic range takes a minor step up from last year’s Xiaomi 14 Ultra; white balance and exposure are almost always well judged, and there’s no visible noise at all. Sharpening is handled very skilfully, too. That’s not to say rivals don’t also do these things – but none deliver the slightly more filmic look you get from a 1in sensor. The Leica Authentic colour profile, which tones down saturation and boosts contrast, helps out too; I’m sure Xiaomi has toned it down just a tad from last year, where I thought it could be too strong in places. Leica Vibrant produces more social-ready snaps with more vibrant hues.

The 200MP telephoto represents the biggest upgrade, being perfect for portraits and with colours that are a perfect match for the wide-angle camera. Highlights and shadows are well balanced, textures and facial features are preserved in fine detail, and the bokeh blur behind foreground subjects is simply delicious. Everything is maintained when sensor cropping to 8.6x, too. I put it up there with the best zooms on any camera right now.

Xiaomi will let you digitally zoom as much as 120x, and while quality quickly drops off, you can get far closer to static subjects than you’d think before smears and soft edges appear.

While it by no means lets the side down, the ultrawide camera isn’t quite so consistent on colour, depending on how much light in in a given scene. Sharpness drops off at night, too, but holds up well enough during the day to keep a position near the top of the pile. Sharpness and lens correction are handled well across the entire frame.

There’s no autofocus here, and the zoom lenses’ short focus distance makes them a better choice for close-ups anyway.

In low light, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra impresses across the board. Colours are natural, even around harsh street lamps, there’s lots of detail on display without resorting to the Night mode, and bright light sources aren’t blown out to preserve shadows. Both zoom lenses put in a fantastic showing, and the ultrawide isn’t a million miles behind.

The softness present on the outgoing 14 Ultra’s 5x zoom seems gone here, and light flares are a little more controlled too. We’re talking small differences, and there were a few situations where I’d hand the win elsewhere, but taken as a whole package I think the 15 Ultra delivers more than any of its rivals.

Software experience: familiar, smarter

The latest version of Xiaomi’s HyperOS interface finally feels more removed from the old MIUI one, with fresh icons, minimal-looking menus and plenty of customisation. Some iOS influences remain, like the split quick settings and notification panes, and there are quite a few own-brand apps to try – or ignore, if you prefer Google’s defaults.

Xiaomi has all the AI tools I’d expect from a Flagship phone right now. Google’s Gemini is the default voice assistant, with the Gemini Live natural language chatbot and Circle to Search both on-board. Realtime subtitles are home-grown, as are live foreign language translation, transcription for the voice recorder app, and a writing assistant that can summarise and polish text – and not just in supported Xiaomi apps, but system-wide whenever you highlight any text.

The AI image editing tools are as comprehensive as Samsung’s and Google’s, with options to erase objects, expand tightly cropped shots (with impressively convincing results), remove unwanted reflections and replace skies with more visually pleasing views. Not everything is handled on-device, but the generative edits are done at a real lick.

The only question mark remaining is update support. Xiaomi committed to four new Android versions and six years of security patches for its other recent releases, so I’d expect similar here. That’s not as much as Google or Samsung have pledged, but still longer than most people keep their phones for. Only factor it into a buying decision if you’re in for the very long haul.

Performance & battery life: annual improvements

With a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and 16GB of RAM, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra easily keeps pace with the rest of this year’s flagship phones. Geekbench single- and multi-core results of 2899 and 8822 aren’t the highest I’ve seen, but they’re a welcome boost over last year’s phone, and mean day-to-day performance is unflappable.

A vapor chamber helps keep temperatures largely in check, with only intense benchmarking apps really able to slow it down after repeated runs. 4K filming isn’t a struggle, and gaming is no sweat either. Diablo Immortal was able to hit a smooth 60fps with every setting cranked to high – ray tracing included. Xiaomi appears to have blocked 3DMark on review devices, but I’m confident this phone will eat up any game available in the Play Store right now.

Western markets should expect 512GB of on-board storage as standard; that makes pricing essentially like-for-like against the latest Pro iPhone and Ultra Galaxy. There’s also a 1TB capacity model, but availability might vary between countries.

I found battery life on the outgoing Xiaomi 14 Ultra a little underwhelming compared to rivals with much higher capacity cells. Xiaomi has stepped things up for the successor, finding room for a larger 5410mAh battery that uses silicon-carbon chemistry to keep its physical dimensions in check. This still falls short of class leaders like the OnePlus 13, and in my experience the 15 Ultra doesn’t have efficiency on its side either.

While I always managed to last all day before needing to plug in, even with an hour of gaming and a few more of streaming video, I got further into the red than with some 2025 flagships. It did better than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Honor Magic 7 Pro and Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, so I still consider it an improvement over last year – just not by a huge margin.

Charging speeds haven’t changed between generations, but 90W over USB-C and 80W on a compatible charging pad are still rather rapid indeed. A complete wired top-up takes less than 30 minutes, leaving anything Apple, Samsung or Google-made in the dust. This is sadly yet another flagship Android that has skipped Qi2 magnetic charging, though.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra verdict

Spend any length of time with the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and you can’t help but fall for its fantastic photos. No other phone can match its epic sensor selection and characterful image processing, while the optional photography kit makes it the obvious choice for anyone who operates in focal lengths and exposure values.

True, this isn’t a size zero smartphone – but it otherwise looks the part, and doesn’t really disappoint anywhere else. It has power and impactful display you’d expect of a 2025 flagship, while battery life has improved just enough over last year to edge ahead of big-name rivals like the Pixel 9 Pro XL and Galaxy S25 Ultra. It narrowly undercuts them on price when speccing the same amount of storage, too.

There’s no need to spend quite so much if you’re after more of an all-rounder – most of which are still perfectly capable of taking great pics in most conditions – but none blur the lines between phone and compact camera quite like this.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra technical specifications